Jerry Langton Three-Book Bundle (16 page)

There was nothing of incriminating value inside the Mustang, and its passengers were released. But in the Chevy, the cops found a veritable treasure trove of evidence: three Demon Keepers' jackets, two handguns (including a stolen.357 Magnum), gloves with lead stitched into the fingers and an ounce of hash. That wasn't enough hash to make a lot of money selling, so it was forgiven. The real haul was the guns.

Since the other guys in the car — Kane's No. 2 Denis Cournoyer and a talented Montreal meth cook named Michael Scheffer — had basically clean records, the lawyer they met with convinced Kane that it would be best for everyone if he took the blame for everything. The prosecutor couldn't prove any plot against Walsh's life, so the charges were simply possession of the weapons. Cournoyer walked, Scheffer got two months and Kane — who had previously been imprisoned in Quebec for torturing and nearly killing a young man who had stolen some handguns from him — got four months.

Upon hearing this, Stadnick was eager to cut his losses with the Demon Keepers and disbanded them immediately. He then sent a message to Kane telling him there were no hard feelings.

But, as he later told police, Kane — a sensitive and preternaturally suspicious man — came to believe in prison that Stadnick had intentionally set him up to fail: that, for some reason, he wanted to get rid of him. Some commentators in the media have since agreed with that idea. But it's absurd. Stadnick wanted nothing more than to move the Hells Angels into Ontario and the utter failure of the Demon Keepers set that plan back considerably. And the proud Stadnick was personally humiliated by the ineffectiveness of his pet project, a fact that allowed his rival Steinert to mock him and openly talk about forming his own gang in Ontario. In fact, it was at about this point that Magnussen stopped acting as Stadnick's bodyguard and lackey, instead following tall, handsome Steinert around.

But it didn't matter. Kane, who had been so loyal to Hells Angels for years and through much suffering and little reward, changed his mind. He turned. Kane became not only an informant, but a very rich one as the RCMP paid him dearly for his information.

When he was released from prison, he went to go see Stadnick right away. While it's pretty standard practice in biker clubs to see your boss after getting out of prison, I've since been told Kane was also looking for some usable material from the normally immune-from-prosecution Stadnick to give to his new bosses in the RCMP.

He didn't get any. Stadnick was polite, but curt with him; shooing him back to his old sponsor Carroll at every occasion. That convinced Kane that he was right about Stadnick setting him up to fail. But it was later determined that Stadnick was busy putting together his master plan. In fact, in an effort to accomplish it, Stadnick had even given up his title as national president, after eight long and productive years, to giant, short-tempered Robert “Ti-Maigre” Richard, who had been Sorel's much-feared sergeant-at-arms.

Made up of Stadnick's trusted friends and the Hells Angels' best drug-sellers, the Nomads were a new kind of chapter. Welcome at any Hells Angels clubhouse, the Nomads were a sort of super-chapter, a “dream team” whose primary task was the equitable and profitable sale of drugs across the country. The long-range goal — and this perfectly dovetailed with Stadnick's coast-to-coast recruitment drive — was to have a virtual monopoly on all drug sales in the entire country. La Belle Province was becoming just too small a market, and the Hells Angels were fighting a bloody war with the Rock Machine and their allies for control of it.

An added benefit of Nomads membership was that it allowed another layer of protection against prosecution. A Nomad never touched any drugs. He told a Hells Angel to tell a prospect to tell a hangaround to tell an associate to do the actual drug dealing. If any active party was caught, he could only turn in the guy above him. And, as the chain of responsibility got higher, the likelihood of anyone turning informant — at least, according to the plan — was decreased. It's unlikely any street-level dealers even knew who was actually pulling the strings on, or getting the big profits from, their very risky occupations.

It was the antithesis of the traditional motorcycle club model in which individual members were allowed to engage in illegal activities, but the club itself — and, importantly, its management — was not involved and had the ability to deny any knowledge of any illegal activity. That was the key difference between Stadnick's Hells Angels and Parente's Outlaws. Stadnick was involved up to the hilt, but insulated himself from prosecution with layers and layers of lackeys. Parente, on the other hand, could deny any knowledge of any illegal activity undertaken by a fellow member, and certainly would never admit to being involved with anything any other Outlaw did to break the law.

At various times, the Nomads consisted of Stadnick, his right-hand man Donald “Pup” Stockford, former Halifax boss Carroll, Montreal kingpin Maurice “Mom” Boucher, former Trois-Rivieres Chapter president Richard “Rick” Vallée, former SS member Normand “Biff ” Hamel, Louis “Me-Lou” Roy, Salvatore Brunetti, René “Balloune” Charlebois, André Chouinard, Denis “Pas Fiable” Houle, Gilles “Trooper” Mathieu, Michel Rose, Richard “Bert” Mayrand, Normand Robitaille, Luc Bordeleau and Pierre Laurin along with prospects Bruno Lefebvre, Guillaume Serra, Paul “Smurf” Brisebois and Jean-Richard “Race” Larivière.

Five of them — Boucher, Robitaille, Houle (despite the fact that his nickname meant “Unreliable”), Chouinard and Rose — stayed in Montreal to administer what was called “The Table,” which oversaw the importation, allocation and distribution of drugs (particularly cocaine) to the other chapters. All drug sales involving the Hells Angels or their friends were controlled by The Table, except those undertaken by the Sherbrooke Chapter, which had negotiated a separate deal with the Nomads' brass.

The primary task of the others was to recruit new business and maintain and protect the connections they had already established. Stadnick's job was to oversee all operations outside Quebec.

It began paying dividends immediately. Through a friend of Boucher's, they gained access to a supply of cocaine from the Italian Mafia the likes of which they had never seen before, courtesy of Guy LePage. LePage and Boucher were about the same age and grew up in the same neighbourhood, but didn't meet each other until they were both adults. LePage had been a Montreal cop, but had resigned suddenly after a 10-year career when his best friend on the force was being investigated for fraud. Then he opened a disco. One of his frequent customers was Boucher. The biker plied LePage with gifts and nights out, wooing him to the Hells Angels' side. Before long, LePage had established links with Colombian cartels and the Italian Mafia and the trickle of cocaine coming into Canada through the Hells Angels transformed into a cascade.

Quebec, especially, had higher quantities of premium coke than ever before. And the Nomads were getting rich. Because of this surplus of coke, the Nomads laid down a strict law that forbade anybody in their territory from selling cocaine for less than $50,000 a kilo. The penalty was death. Nobody was immune. The Nomads even killed their own, if they crossed the line. After many warnings about selling for too little in his Trois-Rivieres territory, Roy was a guest of honor at the Nomads' fifth anniversary party. That was the last night he was ever seen alive.

But while the strict adherence to minimum pricing standards improved their bottom line in the short term, it also allowed the Rock Machine to stay profitable. By attracting customers with cheaper coke, the Rock Machine managed not just to stay afloat financially but to erode the Hells Angels' customer base in Quebec and undermine street-level dealers' faith in their dominance of the region.

The Nomads concept paid almost immediate dividends in the rest of the country as well. Stadnick had worked hard to make connections from coast to coast, and the massive profits associated with cocaine trafficking was a very big part of that.

His greatest success was Winnipeg, but it did not come easily or cheaply. For years, Stadnick wooed the two predominant gangs in the city — the Spartans and their hated enemies Los Brovos — while auditioning and grooming them for Hells Angels prospect status. He even started his own small gang there, the cops called them the Redliners, but they were not on the scale of the Demon Keepers. He was in the city so often — making it a third home after Hamilton and Montreal — that he maintained a girlfriend and even had a son, Damon, with her there.

Just after he anointed Los Brovos as the winner of the competition, he tried to strengthen the bond by inviting their former president and best-loved member, David Boyko, to a party hosted by the Halifax Chapter. Once there, a drunken Magnussen (who went with Stadnick, even though he worked primarily with Steinert by this time) punched Boyko and threatened his life over a drug debt Boyko confessed no knowledge of. When Boyko's murdered body was found in nearby Dartmouth the next day, Stadnick had to go back to Winnipeg and report the news.

Not surprisingly, they weren't happy. It set his plan back some months, but Los Brovos eventually became the Hells Angels Winnipeg Chapter. Not long after, the bodies of Magnussen and Steinert — who many believed was responsible for the death of 11-year-old Daniel Desrochers — were fished out of the St. Lawrence River. They had not been hidden. The forensics people determined that they had been tied to chairs and beaten to death with hammers.

And by 1998, according to a police officer I interviewed, Stadnick was supplying “virtually all the drugs in Winnipeg” and plenty more farther west.

At the same time he was recruiting out west, Stadnick was, rather naturally, trying to bring Ontario into the fold. That's when he used the third method of taking over: getting existing clubs to become his allies and eventually his vassals. The hard part was picking which clubs to work with.

The first choice was an astute one. The Vagabonds — usually called the “Vags” — were large (70 members and prospects), active in the drug trade and located in more or less downtown Toronto. They were also publicity savvy. Every December they hung a festive “Season's Greeting” banner on their Gerrard Street East headquarters (actually they still do) and were always careful to have themselves photographed in full colors at charitable events, many of which they sponsored.

Stadnick and Hells Angels first approached them in 1987. It was a good match. The Vags were happy to have access to the Quebeckers' drugs and were impressed with the fabled Hells Angels patch. Hells Angels were overjoyed to find such a large and well-disciplined club in the heart of Toronto.

But, unlike many other clubs, the Vags did not immediately jump at the chance to become Hells Angels. Many of them were pretty happy just as they were. They made a few bucks here and there selling weed and hash and working as bouncers, but didn't want to get into big-time organized crime, which they knew Hells Angels represented. And they generally thought cocaine was too dangerous — not just the penalties associated with trafficking it and the local competition it could potentially anger, but also the drug itself, devilishly addictive and horribly destructive.

But the majority did not speak for the whole club. Their president — a tall, skinny occasional plumber named Donald “Snorkel” Melanson — absolutely loved the idea. Not only did he want to get rich, but his greatest love was cocaine. Although many have reported he earned his nickname from the impressive size of his nose, it was actually because of its abilities, not its appearance. One of his friends (who was not a member of the Vagabonds) told a local reporter that he had personally seen Melanson use the snorkel to vacuum up a two-foot-long line of coke in one breath. That friend — who can only be identified as “Saul” because he's in the RCMP's witness protection program — discreetly joined Melanson in a deal with Hells Angels that resulted in a small pipeline of cocaine from Montreal to Toronto.

Meeting couriers in strip joints and bars on Yonge Street, well away from Vags territory, and never in colors, Melanson and Saul were fronted bags of coke. While they had agreed to sell it all, Melanson just couldn't help himself. Saul did his best to get his share on the streets, but Melanson not only sucked the bulk of his up the snorkel, he also generously spread much of it among his friends, including many in the club (who never questioned where this bonanza came from). Weeks passed, and Melanson found himself in debt to Hells Angels to the tune of $80,000. The couriers stopped coming. Instead, some big guys — dressed like businessmen, not bikers — met him in a Yonge Street strip joint and demanded an explanation. He begged for leniency, for more time. He'd get the money. They told him they would see what they could do.